A Better Direction

Bob Cullum: “I purchased the previous editions of your investment guide and would like to have an excuse to buy the new one too. Please explain why your fans should purchase yet another edition.”

☞ Hey, thanks! But you were supposed to borrow it from the library and save $10, which by now would have grown large. The new edition makes an effort to put things in perspective – “the big picture” – adds quite a few money saving tips, and offers two ideas that might boost your stock market returns by 2% a year without adding risk. If one of these ideas were to boost the return on your $10 million portfolio from 5% to 7%, that’s an extra $80 million over 40 years. (Your $10 million would grow to just $70 million at 5%, but to $150 million at 7%.) Granted, when you consider taxes, inflation, and the facts that you may not have $10 million, nor 40 years to wait – and that there’s obviously no guarantee my suggestions will prove to be good ones – you have to dial back the expected $80 million return on your $10 purchase to, as I say, perhaps just perusing a copy at the library. Either way, I hope you enjoy it.

INDEXING

Jim Busek: “This is excellent advice we have seen – and you have given – many times before, but this time it comes from the ultimate nothing-personal-to-gain guy. (He’s dying.)”

☞ He’s right: most stock market investors will be best off with “passive” management, keeping their fees, expenses, and tax bills to the bare minimum. Still, if you want the extra $80 million referenced above, read both books.

WE’RE NUMBER ONE!

In obesity and incarceration, but #49 in life expectancy (down from #24 a decade ago). According to Glenn Greenwald, here, UNICEF ranks us 19th out of 20 wealthy nations in “child well-being.” And the World Economic Forum ranked our bank soundness 108th out of 133, just behind Tanzania and just ahead of Venezuela. Not to mention where our kids rank in math (#27) and science (#22).

I cite the Greenwald piece because, like you, I love my country and want to see it head in a better direction. With its “race to the top” education initiative and its preventive-care-emphasizing, pilot-program-laden health care reform and its emphasis on infrastructure and its innovation-seeding energy department and its financial reform and reinvigorated regulatory agencies – among other things – that better direction is just what we’re getting from the Obama Administration, albeit dragged down at every turn by an opposition party dedicated to the Administration’s failure.